Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a technical field of display panel, in particular, to a flexible display panel and a display apparatus comprising the display panel.
Description of the Related Art
The flexible display panel is a bendable and deformable display panel or display screen made of flexible material, and it has many advantages such as low power consumption, small size, lightweight, easy to install, convenient for transportation, diverse display manners, excellent display quality and so on. The flexible display panel is mainly used in portable electronic devices and touch input device, etc., and it has a broad developing prospect.
The screen is easy to be damaged when the flexible display panel is bent. The damage is not only present in a display area (active area) of the flexible display panel, but also present in a fanout area between the display area and a driver circuit area.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view showing the positional relationship among a driver circuit area 1, a fanout area 2 and a display area 3 in the existing flexible display panel. As shown in FIG. 1, the driver circuit area 1 may comprise a driver IC and/or a gate driver on array circuit (gate driver on array (GOA)). The driver IC comprises a gate IC in the row direction and a source IC in the column direction; the gate driver on array circuit is a circuit in which the gate driver circuit is directly foamed on a substrate to replace the driver chip formed from an external silicon chip. As shown in FIG. 1, the fanout area 2 utilizes a linear wiring manner, in which pins of the driver circuit area 1 are connected with the display area 3 through linear wires. With this wiring manner, the bending force generated when bending the flexible display panel totally acts on the linear wires of the fanout area 2, as a result, the fanout area 2 is easy to be broken and damaged when bending.
Further, the existing driver IC is generally disposed in the middle portion above the fanout area, as shown in FIG. 1. This arrangement facilitates wiring, but causes that the entire flexible display panel is not bendable along the dotted line a in FIG. 1. Also, in the prior art, the gate driver on array circuit is generally disposed along the frame of the display area 3 (not shown in FIG. 1). Though the gate driver on array circuit is bendable in this case, it is easy to be damaged and the characteristics thereof may change during the bending.